As noted below, the skewed incentives are that prosecutors need to close and get convictions in order to progress. They are graded on how well they can get convictions, not if those were "fair."
However, this is also partly be design. The theory of our judicial system is that each side will do everything (legal) in their power to argue opposing sides. And then the judge/jury, after hearing both sides, comes to a logical conclusion. The theory goes that if both sides do their job, each avenue of either guilty or innocent are properly explored and then the decision by the arbiter is the closest to the truth.
In reality, though, the prosecutors often have way more leverage and power to argue more persuasively and offer deals than the average defense lawyer. Especially if the defense is from a public defender. And high-end celebrity defense lawyers that cost millions also have a way of overpowering and bringing more resources to bear in the defense. Combined, this means that rarely are both sides actually being argued in a balanced manner, thus skewing which way the arbiter will decide.
- Come up with the funds to get out of prison in the first place ($10,000 cash in my case, some % of which you typically never see again; 40% in PA)
- Find and still have funds to retain a competent attorney
- Navigate the interminable legal process, part of which means spending half a day sitting around in a courtroom, over and over and over again, either burning vacation days, or losing your job, or both (not to mention childcare, etc.)
- Reject the coercive and unethical plea bargain they try to scare you into
- Waste a day in court at least once a month, just so the judge can satisfy himself that things are moving along
- Research and retain your own experts, obtain mountains of records, go over what happened and everything leading up to it about a million times with a million different people (it's basically a part-time job)
- Try not to worry obsessively about every aspect of what happened and what you might say
- Take more time off to actually go to trial (and jury selection, and other misc. trial prep)
- Leave your fate in the hands of people who may not be competent, may not be educated, and by-and-large skew toward favoring law enforcement
I have about a million things going for me. I own my own (moderately successful) company, and I have a high profile in a relatively affluent community/industry. That buys me an unreasonably high degree of financial and scheduling flexibility that most people don't have. If not for those things, my family and I would be crushed. If this system is designed to do anything, it's designed to crush the people who get caught in it, with no thought to the consequences for society.
If you're privy to some magic whereby a paralegal can appear in her place, then by all means, enlighten me. And send me your PayPal address, because that information is worth actual money.
I feel like the win/closure rate is a huge part of the problem.
Here in Scotland, which I think is fairly similar to England even though the terminology is completely different, the public prosecutor is the procurator fiscal who directly employs solicitors to prosecute cases in the lower courts (Sheriff Courts). Defendants will typically be defended by solicitors working criminal defence firms - often paid for by the state through Legal Aid.
However, for more serious crimes there is a completely separate court - the High Court of the Justiciary before which normal solicitors can't appear - you need to be a specialised advocate and they can't be employed directly by clients but only by solicitors (you do get Solicitor Advocates but apparently they don't appear nearly as often as you might expect). You might be getting the idea of a shared pool from this idea of an advocate (barrister in England) who in theory will take any side of any case. In practice there are advocates working for the public prosecutor for a stint and others who focus on criminal defence. However I suspect most advocates have no desire to do criminal work unless they want to be Sheriffs or Judges.
The big difference is that a professional working in this system will actually get a notion of how trustworthy tea-leaf readings actually are when determining objective true facts (or something similarly scientific, like polygraphs--they don't seem to get much use outside the US either, weird). Well, unless of course the incentives for the professional are wrong, and again it's this "jury of peers" idea that gets in the way, the incentives become about populism and convincing the jury, about the show. Not what's really real, but who can produce the biggest superstimulus of hyperreality. Thanks a lot, Baudrillard :-(
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisitorial_system
and this:
I think we're living in an era of systemic failure of risk analysis. I see it in my company too, where the InfoSec team is basically given free reign, and they're not happy unless every machine is airgapped. At other companies, there is no concept of security at all.
Where is the department that makes the cost/benefit analysis of security measures? I don't see it in government, i don't see it in the private sector.
I think I'm leaving your company soon. It's definitely too much to be dealing with.
In theory lots of things are possible. We need to balance the risk.
I believe that prosecutors generally want to progress into a political or judicial career. Those careers value high conviction rates, political careers love people "tough on crime"
I think voters fall for that slogan because we hate crime and injustice (unfairness) in general. Even though we need to be critical of both sides of the law ("we the people"), it's far easier to focus on/attack the unfairness we see rather than promote the everyday fairness that we take for granted. And we need closure in a lot of cases, so just pin it on that seedy looking character over there if there's hardly any evidence. A mob mentality is born out of our natural desire for "law & order".